


a silver case, make up remover, bare feet

by oh_simone



Series: tales from the golden age of livejournal [6]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, Female Gokudera Hayato, Gen, Genderswap, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: Yamamoto can't figure out if he's the pawn or the knight or the friend or the fool. Gokudera is no help at all. [Standalone]





	a silver case, make up remover, bare feet

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2010 originally for a friend's bday, and functions as sort of a character exercise in counterpoint with the 'girl, unobserved' series-- instead of Yamamoto, it's Gokudera who is genderswapped here. It's not really related except in certain strains of characterization...

  
The hallway is understatedly opulent in the way only luxury hotels can be. He can feel the plush, butter-yellow carpet under the soles of his leather shoes as he stops outside room 304. The door unlocks with a smooth click as he brushes his keycard against the sense pad, and he ducks inside. The room is empty and impersonally elegant in soft gold accents and dark wood furnishings. There is one bed, but it’s big enough to sleep a family of four. He drops his bags on the luggage stand and floor, then straightens his tie. From his own battered duffel, he draws out Shigure Kintoki and gives it a fond pat. On the eastern side is a door that adjoins the next room over. He unlocks it but leaves it closed. That done, he turns the TV on and watches ESPN, noting with amused resignation that the Dodgers don’t seem able to close the deal in their latest run of games.  
  
Exactly seventeen minutes later, he turns the television off and swings Shigure Kintoki free, the blade so familiar it feels like an extension of his arm. He opens the door to the other room, and then, politely, knocks on the adjoining door.  
  
There’s a pause, and the distinct air of being ignored. He smiles, hefts his sword over his shoulder, and kicks down the door.  
  
“What the-” Benni ‘Il Medico’ Bartolini jerks up from where he’s spread on the bed. But the woman astride him, so delicate and frail-looking, twists sharply, and throws herself sideways, locking her legs around him and dragging him across and over.  
  
“I lied, fuckface,” she growls. “This is the last time you fuck with the Vongola.”  
  
And before Benni can do more than widen his eyes, he’s pulled off and flung across the room. The sword that follows cuts through his heart with frictionless accuracy.  
  
“You okay, Gokudera?” Yamamoto asks lightly, a perfunctory smile on his lips. He wipes off the blood and sheaths his sword, turns to watch his partner silently. Gokudera rolls her eyes and glares at him from her reclined position, then sits up and reaches over the bedside table for her cigarettes and lighter. “No smoking room, Gokudera,” he reminds her.  
  
She ignores him and inhales deeply, then blows the smoke back at him deliberately, red lips pursed. Yamamoto steadfastly keeps his eyes on her face. It’s not as difficult as when they first started working together so closely, but it’s still a struggle. Gokudera is dressed to tempt tonight; a red lace basque bodice, scarlet femme-fatale lips, Prada stilettos that probably ate up half their mission budget. Her silver hair is piled high in an artfully messy bun, curled tendrils coming loose to frame her face, and her eyes are a sharper green than usual under the smoky eye makeup.

So, he does stare a little. Yamamoto is only a man, after all.  
  
“Check him for the microchip,” she orders, standing up and crossing the room in the model-perfect walk all Italian women are probably trained to execute from the age of five. Yamamoto obligingly ruffles through the dead man’s clothes, strewn haphazardly on the floor, and when nothing turns up, looks reluctantly at the rapidly grossifying corpse.  
  
“Who wants to play ‘doctor’ on the Doctor?” he jokes, unaffected by Gokudera’s icy glare. She nudges the corpse with the tip of her glossy shoes, and then sharply kicks his jaw open. Il Medico’s head snaps to the side, slack-jawed and staring. With a wry chuckle, Yamamoto flips out a switchblade, crouches down and takes hold the dead man’s jaw. With probably less grace than optimal, he pries out the false tooth at the back of the man’s mouth and cracks open the casing with the knife handle. A small datachip, barely larger than a diamond winks at him. Behind him, Gokudera picks up a black wrap dress and her purse from the floor. Yamamoto tucks the chip away and joins her.  
  
“Clean up crew should be on their way,” he says, and follows her through the adjoining doors to their own room, closing the door behind them.  
  
“Whatever,” she grunts, flicking ash onto the carpet and kicking off the heels. Unconcerned, she rummages through her purse for her glasses and her phone. “Not like we’re leaving until the morning anyways.” She settles on the bed to check her phone, looking like a Victoria’s Secret model on break. Yamamoto deliberately occupies himself with hanging his jacket and her dress in the closet, setting his shoes in the corridor for a polish. When he’s done, he sits at the table, watching her scowl at her email.  
  
For a couple minutes, there is only the furious arrhythmic tapping of her nails against the screen. Her cigarette is burning at the filter and ash drops danger-close to her thighs. Then, with a precise, angry flick, Gokudera tosses the phone aside and meets his gaze unerringly.  
  
“You have something to say,” she drawls, unmistakably clear about not wanting to hear it.  
  
“It’s nothing,” he replies; his smile indicates: your ball, your court.  
  
“Spit it out,” she grits out, and mashes the cigarette filter on the silver-cased paper pad on the bedside drawer. She hates it when he refuses to humor her; it irks her worse when he does.  
  
Yamamoto shrugs, staying relaxed in his chair. He can hear the faint sounds of activity next door as the clean-up crew arrives. Loosening his tie with one hand, resting an arm on the table top, he looks as mild and harmless as an accountant. “I could have done it when he left for the taxi stand. There were forty seconds of off-camera hallway that would have easily sufficed, or when you crossed the bridge, between the two passing trains.”  
  
Gokudera bristles a little, but her reply is only snappish. “So now you’re playing strategist? A little late for that, don’t you think?”  
  
Laughing lightly, he shrugs. “I’m not the smartest guy,” he admits with a lopsided smile that fades as he holds her glare. “But you’re the smartest person I know. You would have seen it ahead of time.”  
  
Her chin hardens, tips her face up at a belligerent angle. The ice in her eyes would cow anyone else, but Yamamoto’s probably been on the receiving end of those glares since time immemorial. He’s effectively immune.  
  
“And?” she shoots back, a challenge in her voice. “So what if I had?”  
  
“Then why didn’t I kill him two hours earlier?” Yamamoto asks bluntly. There’s tension in the room, cold and thick, but he forces himself stay aligned against the back of his chair in a casual slouch.  
  
“It,” she hisses, “was necessary to get him off his guard, get him somewhere private.”  
  
“What difference does it make?”  
  
Her leg slips off the covers and she stands. Yamamoto knows that he’s riling her up, knows that probably he’ll get the silent treatment for the next few days. When Gokudera feels cornered, she gets her feet on the ground, back against a wall. She may be one of the most powerful players in the mafia underworld, but her gutter-rat instincts are never far below the surface. “Why,” she says silkily, “do you care?”  
  
He tips his head to the side, smiles blandly up at her. “You’re taking risks, Gokudera. I want to know why.”  
  
“Risks?” she echoes, looking genuinely surprised. Her expression immediately melts away into one of realization and outrage. “You think I’m taking _risks_?” she spits. Her hand sweeps with angry flourish down her lace-clad torso.  
  
Yamamoto finally sits up with a sigh. “I do,” he tells her flatly. “I think it’s unnecessary. And I know you can take care of yourself, but what if he drugged you? Or he kept his gun? I could have handled it.” He leans forward, pleading. “Gokudera, don’t you trust me?”  
  
“ _I do_!”  
  
The answer bursts from her mouth as if shocked out of her. The following silence is nearly as startling as her outburst. Yamamoto waits, wide-eyed while she struggles to contain her anger. Her lips thin out in a red line; spots of color dance high on her cheekbones. She clenches her hands and then folds her arms under her breasts.  
  
“I do,” she says, more calmly. “I can plan the way I do, _because_ I trust you. You patronizing motherfucker.”  
  
It’s a simple enough answer, but Yamamoto is speechless. Over ten years of friendship, and it had taken half of that for Gokudera to get fully comfortable around him. And though he knows that she’s as willing to put her life in his hands as he is in hers, she’s not one for casual declarations of the truth.  
  
Helplessly, they stare at each other, neither really knowing how to finish this agonizing, endless conversation. There’s a knock from the room over that breaks the spell; the crew is done and moving out. Gokudera turns away, rummages through the overnighter from the luggage stand and ducks into the bathroom with a change of clothes and her toiletries bag. After a moment, there are the sounds of bottles lining up on the marble counter in hard, angry clacks. Slowly, Yamamoto gets to his feet, and crosses the room to lean against the bathroom doorway.  
  
Gokudera’s already shucked off the lingerie, stands over the counter in a tank top and thin cotton boxers rolled at the waist. She pauses in the midst of removing her makeup, catches his eye in the mirror, and looks away, scrubbing at an invisible smudge on her cheek.  
  
He’s content to watch just for a moment. In this instance of being completely ignored, he’s allowed the intimacy of observation; the curve of her neck, the smooth points of her shoulder blades. The way her hands, marred and blurred with hundreds of burns from bombs, acids, and cigarettes, still move swift and sure. The way one leg sags on her curled toes and tilts out at an angled bow. She’s still angry and hurt. It shows in the fast, erratic movements of her hands, the way her lips are still tight and downturned at the corners, the line of muscle running a vertical edge down her neck.  
  
Yamamoto feels tired and drained, but he can’t help thinking how beautiful she is, even under the stark lights, in her oldest clothes and black streaks of mascara under her eyes giving way to the dark circles of the perpetually sleep deprived.  
  
“I love you,” he finally says, a full decade’s worth of history behind that unassuming, well-worn phrase. “Can’t you think about me, just a little?” he asks, with a poor effort at a smile.  
  
Her gaze flickers to him briefly, and she leans forward, intent on removing her eyeliner. “That’s your problem,” she says, clipped. “Deal with it.”  
  
Yamamoto smiles, and then laughs. He's _been_ dealing with it; the problem is, he doesn't know how much longer he can. From the way her knuckles whiten and how she refuses to meet his eyes, Gokudera's probably wondering the same.


End file.
